The accumulation of waste is becoming an increasingly serious problem not only in the United States of America but in a number of foreign countries as well. A major contributor to this problem is the accumulation of canned goods, particularly canned food products, and the continuing increase in storage space required for the disposal of such waste products and the preventive measures necessary to avoid contamination of the earth and ground water when exposed to such waste products, and particularly owing to the toxicity of food contents after deteriorating over extended periods of time.
It has been proposed to recycle refuse into fertilizer by various methods, such as, disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,653,871 and 3,736,120 to A. Tempe. Also, it has been proposed to subject cans to a shredding process primarily for the purpose of separation of paper labels from the cans as proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,988,044 to D. H. Weitzman et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,284,514 to D. R. Wright is similarly directed to a method of rupturing containers for the purpose of treating the material inside the container but does not suggest a satisfactory way of separating the material inside of the container from the metal so that it can be recycled or converted into useful feed values. Moreover, it has been proposed to recycle materials, such as, hide waste materials combined with starch through the combined steps of dehydration and extrusion, for example, as suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,929 to C. J. Lehn et al. Other patents of interest in this area are U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,905,557 to J. Degenhardt, 3,930,799 to E. W. Eweson and 3,971,306 to F. D. Wiese et al. To my knowledge, however, no one has satisfactorily devised a process and apparatus for lacerating canned goods or other containers to remove the contents for conversion into useful byproducts and particularly in such a way that the process can be carried out in a high speed, closely coordinated sequence of steps.